


imposter of the vent (what is your wisdom)

by Anonymous



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Awkward First Times, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Bottom Kurusu Akira, Crack Treated Seriously, Dirty Talk But It's About Murder, Enthusiastic Consent, Happy Ending, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Minor Character Death, Mutual Pining, Psychological Horror, Sadomasochism, Tentacles, Top Akechi Goro, akeshu - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:00:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29117892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Something is killing off the crewmates (it's Akechi) and Akira is next. Kind of.(An Among Us AU, so it's basically what you would expect.)
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 8
Kudos: 211
Collections: Anonymous





	imposter of the vent (what is your wisdom)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shantealeaves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shantealeaves/gifts).



> written for the amazing [shanti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shantealeaves/pseuds/shantealeaves) via a super sekrit sekrit santa exchange

Akira does not like the dark.

It is a little known fact among the rest of the crew, thanks to his utter aversion in sharing anything remotely personal about himself, let alone old traumas. But now, as he jumps at the shadows and smashes his toes every couple of steps, he is once more reminded of just how much he dislikes not being able to see.

The power had failed, taking with it both the lights and the comms and triggering the emergency lockdown protocols; meaning that Akira is effectively trapped in with nothing but the claustrophobic hum of circuits and his unfortunately vivid imagination for company. It is not a good time to be alone right now, especially when considering the bloated, eviscerated corpse currently rotting in the airlocks. Akira tries to put the dreadful incident out of his mind, electing instead to busy his hands and his thoughts empty as he feels his way through the room, hoping to find his way to the door or something to jumpstart the power with. His luck finally improves when he manages to locate a portable generator with his shins.

Ignoring the new patch of bruises blossoming on his legs, he quickly gets to work, slowly lugging the device towards what he hopes is the wiring panels. He is so immersed in the task that the sudden burst of static from his communicator nearly startles him into dropping it onto his feet. Heart still pounding, he scrambles one-handedly to unhook his comms from his belt and nearly drops that too before he manages to switch it on. The hologram flickers eerily as if the darkness was trying its best to swallow it as well until a faint silhouette finally swims into view.

"...--Kurusu-kun?" 

The voice, even when distorted by the electronic filter, is familiar enough that it nearly brings tears of relief to his eyes. 

"Akechi?" Akira calls out in a thin whisper, wary of disturbing the quiet that had settled over the room like a shroud. "Akechi, is that you? Are you okay? What about the others?"

There is a pause, and then a small huff of breath as if the person on the other end is politely trying not to disdain him for asking inane questions during an emergency. 

"Yes, it's me," Akechi replies, his tone deliberately level in the way that suggests he is about to explode from stress, and it oddly helps Akira breathe a little easier. "And to answer your questions: yes, I am fine. As for the others, I am afraid I do not know as I was only able to tune my comms to your frequency."

Akira swallows down his concern for his unaccounted for crewmates, along with the small pleased flutter that Akechi had chosen to get in contact with _him_ first instead of, perhaps, someone more objectively useful like Futaba. Which, of course, would be highly inappropriate for him to admit with the ship possibly on the brink of catastrophic failure and a possible serial killer on the loose. He opens his mouth to propose a plan, to take control of the situation like it is expected of him.

"Aww, did you miss me that much?" is naturally what his stupid mouth ends up saying instead. 

"Of course, Kurusu-kun," Akechi's voice replies sweetly. "As much as one would miss a persistent toothache."

Akira makes a flattered sound, hoping that it will clearly convey the idea that he is swooning on the other side of the unreliable line. "That much?" he says, affecting a light, innocent surprise, and he almost manages a genuine smile. Akechi just has that kind of effect on him.

To the rest of the crew, their newest member had always been inscrutable; unfailingly polite but seldom if ever divulging any personal details. Even after sharing the same living space for several months, Akira still knows next to nothing about him aside from his unusually vast array of talents. The way he can outlast Ryuji in a battle of stamina when hauling around replacement fuel cells, vaporize asteroids with the best of them, and still has enough time to help Haru with her greenhouse. Not to mention his seemingly unparalleled knowledge of interstellar navigation that is only second to Futaba's (while Akira himself still gets lost on his way back from the storage area).

With russet eyes and honeyed hair, a high, aristocratic nose, and gently curved lips, he was seemingly the embodiment of perfection. Flawless in every way, except for one minor incident where Akira had to give him a life ban from the cafeteria after his vegetable soup had eaten a hole through the stove.

After that incident, however, Akechi had changed. Or rather, Akira started to see a side to him that he had never thought to look for before, and he quickly learned that beneath his smooth, polished exterior and pleasantly boyish charm was a petty, vindictive little bastard whose true talent lay in holding long and elaborate grudges. Shortly after the soup incident, Akechi had begun to go out of his way to show his particular brand of _appreciation_ for Akira's personal attack on his lethal lack of culinary skills. It began with a suspicious series of electrical failures which coincided with the times Akira habitually took his baths, followed by a sudden shortage of bedsheets and missing undergarments. After he caught on, it soon escalated into weeks of mutual harassment that Akira had found endlessly charming. 

But their petty flyting contest aside, there is something about Akechi's presence that never fails to reassure him.

Maybe it is his confidence—the smooth, innocuous smiles that he uses to charm his way into extra curry at breakfast, or to sweet talk Ryuji into covering his shifts, or to bribe Futaba into handing over the security footage containing Akira's embarrassing shrieks when Akechi had filled the inside of his spacesuit with worms from Haru's garden. Or more counterintuitively, perhaps it is the sometimes cold, methodical look he gets in his eyes when he thinks no one else is looking. The suggestion of a darkness hidden beneath obfuscating layers of geniality that Akira also sees reflected in the mirror. 

Whichever it is, the sound of Akechi's voice, as faint and crackling with static as it is, is infinitely soothing. He latches onto it, like a guiding beacon, or perhaps a moth warming itself in the flames.

"...your poor taste in jokes aside," Akechi is saying again. "Our top priority should be to get the power running again." _Before the life support systems start to fail and we all die a slow, miserable death from asphyxiation,_ he doesn't need to add.

"I might have an idea," Akira says, forging onward with more confidence than he actually feels. "I think I can get the doors open with this backup generator I found. I can probably use it to overload the locks and head over to electrical."

"... by yourself?"

It may have just been wishful thinking but Akira hopes that he hadn't imagined the subtle note of admonishment that he can detect over the line. In the dark, without the benefit of seeing Akechi's expressions, he could almost imagine that the other boy was concerned about him.

"I'll be fine," he replies cheekily. "As I've been told recently, I am more persistent than a toothache." 

His bravado is rewarded with a faint sigh from the other line. He imagines it puffing out from his mouth and fogging up the inside of his helmet and nearly smiles. "Unfortunate, indeed," Akechi replies dryly. "But I suppose we do not have much else in the way of plans. In the meantime, I will try to get in contact with the rest of our crewmates."

"Sounds good to me." 

It is not a good plan — it is not even a bad one as it is _utterly suicidal_ , to venture out alone into where something unknowable lurks in the darkness. But then again, Akira has never been the brains of this operation.

Akira thinks about back to the morning, to the body in the med bay with its terrified, bloodless face, or what was left of it, etched into a permanent scream. Admittedly, Mishima hadn't been the most popular among the crewmates, but no one deserved to die like that—with their face disfigured, ribcage pried apart to spill their organs onto the floor. Since then, the atmosphere on the ship had been fraught with dread and suspicion. Subdued on the best days and hostile on others. Tempers teetering on a knife's edge, with the more belligerent members of their crew ready to descend on each other like a pack of starving wolves.

Ryuji and Akechi, in particular, had been at each other's throats never missing out on a moment to ruffle each other's feathers. It had been almost fondly exasperating at first, but now...

Akira gives himself a shake to stop himself from getting sidetracked again — the clock is ticking, after all. "Well, um, I'm off," he mumbles, suddenly unable to scrounge up anything wittier to say when it hits him that this could very well be the last time Akechi might hear from him alive. He debates cutting the connection off and pretending he had dropped his call when he hears how lame he sounds. He clears his throat instead. "Be careful."

There is a pause on the other end, long enough that Akira begins to worry that he has offended him with the insinuation that he can't take care of himself until he hears a light huff of breath that almost sounds like a laugh.

"Really, Kurusu," Akechi's smooth voice purrs, unexpectedly low and dark in his ears, "You should worry about yourself first."

The line shuts off with a click of finality, and it only isn't until he hears the tone at the end that Akira realizes that his hands are trembling and his chest is tight, pounding with a rush of giddiness that he can't explain.  
  
  


* * *

Getting the doors open had been easier and harder than he had imagined—the generator had done the trick, lighting up the room in a bright flash of gold that nearly blinded him, before it fizzled and cracked until the air smelled of ozone. Akira had yelped, jumping back as the sparks threatened to singe his gear. But when the commotion died down, the overload had done what it needed to. 

The actual hard part was that Akira had severely underestimated how being in space with minimal artificial gravity for prolonged amounts of time had reduced his muscle mass. Actually prying the metal doors open had taken far more out of him than he would ever admit to anyone else on board, especially to Akechi.

The rest of the trip had been made under the eerie cover of darkness. With only the minuscule amounts of light coming from his helmet, Akira could only see several feet ahead of him at any given time—the lack of sight transforms the familiar hallways he had frequented for months into something new and frightening.

Akira ends up at his destination unmolested—a fact that brings him both relief and the unease that his luck is only temporary. There is just enough juice left in the spare generator that he had been forced to lug around for just one more charge. He repeats his earlier steps; with another bright flash and the smell of burnt copper (and several minutes of sweating and swearing), he finally gets the doors to the electrical room open. 

The room is unnaturally muggy, but the lighting is too dim to make out much else aside from the dull orange glow of whatever emergency lighting was used to power the switchboards. Akira kicks aside the now useless generator with a foot to avoid tripping over it and carefully feels his way in, pressing his fingers to the walls to guide him wherever the light from his helmet fails to shine.

He isn't entirely sure what he is looking for, only that he would know once he finds it. He is quickly proven right when he hears the telltale sound of fried, sparking circuits—the source of the culprit of the blackout is a panel of wires that someone or something had deliberately pried open and slashed. 

Akira frowns at the obvious evidence that had wiped away any doubt that this disaster could have been natural—the idea that Mishima could have merely tripped and accidentally spilled his guts on the floor was a tempting fiction, as it meant they could continue to pretend that they weren't trapped on a sinking ship with something that is determined to kill them. 

But whatever the case, he still has a job to do. Smoking out the saboteur could (hopefully) wait until he got the power back up. With a faint clang of metal on metal, he sets down his toolbox and rummages around until he finds a set of pliers. With a steadying breath, Akira prepares to get to work.

He starts with assessing the damage and concludes that whoever had done this had been a hurry—the wires had not been cut so much as they had been ripped out in a frenzy—a fact that makes his work much harder than if it had been a clean cut. He wastes a lot of time sorting out what goes where before he can carefully start to reattach what was broken. All the while, the beat of his own pulse rang in his ears as they strained to listen for any sounds that did not belong. But aside from his own harsh breathing, the grind of his tools, and the occasional rattle of the old vents, nothing appears to be out of place.

He estimates that he is about halfway through when he elects to take a short rest—most of the wires had been reattached, though some of the filament had been so frayed that it was no longer salvageable. Akira gingerly tugs off his helmet and brushes his sweaty bangs out of his eyes. But as he does, a strange scent fills his nose, a strange metallic— _coppery_ —smell. 

At first, he rationalizes it as the smell of the burnt fuse that had become stronger after removing the filter in his mask, but beneath the noxious, chemical fumes is the pungent smell of decomposition. With slow, dawning dread, Akira realizes that he recognizes what it is—the same way Mishima's body had _reeked_.

It's blood. 

Blood and rotting flesh. 

Akira fights down the urge to gag, bile rising up to his throat and making his eyes water. He eventually wins against the reflex but only after he crams his helmet back over his head. He should probably call Akechi, he thinks, the thoughts coming to him slowly perhaps due to shock. Akechi would probably know what to do. Akechi would probably tell him to get the fuck out of here _and not do anything stupid_.

Instead, Akira reaches back into his toolbox, but this time for his longest, sturdiest wrench. All his senses are on high alert as he slowly sweeps his meager light source around the room—like he should have done when he had first entered.

Thump, thump, thump, goes his heart as his eyes brush over the mundane objects in the room—a circuit board, more clumps of wires, a forgotten mug of coffee left on one of the benches—until they finally land on something unusual: a dark, wet patch on the floor, spreading out from beneath a dark blue tarp.

His feet move automatically as if dragged by some invisible force. But the only thing puppeteering him forward is his own morbid curiosity. He knows exactly what he will find as his fingers clench around the tarp, which is exactly why he yanks it back with one frenzied motion.

Splayed across the floor was the ship's captain.

 _Was_ , because Akira would have been hard-pressed to identify it if not for the giveaway shine of his hairless scalp—a scalp stretched grotesquely over a partially caved-in skull, dribbling red-tinted brain tissue over its side like the filling of a failed baking experiment. His mouth hangs open, twisted in what may have been a scream, but the rest of his face is too distorted for him to make out what his last expression would have been—the crushed frame of his glasses bent around his face like twisted wires and the remnants of the tinted glass buried in his eyeballs. The rest of him is barely recognizable—a mess of twisted innards and pulverized meat put together in a crude imitation of a human being by a creature that had never encountered one before. What struck him as odd as it is terrifying is how _wrong_ his intestines looked—long and fleshly, stretching out away from his torso like they had a will of their own.

Akira finds himself frozen, staring down at the body in what he thinks must be shock. The captain had been universally reviled; he was hateful and cruel, ruling the ship with an iron grip—and now, Akira stands over his body almost morbidly entranced. A swell of nausea rises into his chest as his heart starts to pound, beating faster and faster as his eyes continue to linger on how his bones jut out from his putrid flesh like white dahlias blooming from the mud— 

The vents suddenly rattle and Akira stiffens like he had been electrocuted. He hurriedly tosses the tarp back over the corpse and leaps back, thinking of nothing but putting as much distance as possible from the gruesome sight. 

His throat closes up, trapping within it what may or may not have been a scream. But screaming now will not do anyone any good, not their newly deceased captain and certainly not Akira himself. He needs to keep his head, in both the literal and the figurative—first, he needs to finish what he set out to do. Fix the cables. Get the power running. Find his friends.

Normally, Akira wouldn't have noticed it and he _hadn't_ noticed it earlier. But now, with the adrenaline coursing through his veins and his heightened awareness, he finally notices the thing that does not belong. Akira is panting harshly, each exhale loud within the confines of his helmet. And the vents continue to rattle alongside it—slow, and rhythmic, pulsing like something alive. 

His thoughts stutter to a halt. His body is nailed in place like his limbs had stopped belonging to him the moment that he realized he was not alone. A voice rings out in his head— _almost like Akechi's_ —urging him to run, to fight, the desperate attempts of his survival instincts begging for him to preserve himself.

But something calls for him, something that forces him to turn despite the sense of wrongness screaming in his chest. The light turns with him, sweeping across the far corners of the room, and something catches around his ankle and _tugs_.

Akira registers pain—in his hands and kneecaps when they smash against the floor, but he doesn't have time to dwell on it because he is too busy clawing at the ground as he is dragged backward. The grip around him is like a vice, snaking up his legs, his waist, his arms with bruising force—it curls around his body like living vines, rising higher and higher like the hysteria bubbling in his chest. 

Violently, he thrashes in the creature's hold as his survival instincts finally come back online—he kicks and squirms, desperate to fight his way back to freedom. But his weak, human limbs might as well have been made out of foam for what little damage they could do. The tendrils continue to creep, winding around his waist with slow, methodical precision.

This, Akira thinks, is as good a time as any to scream.

But the creature appears to sense his thoughts. Just as Akira decides to call for help, he finds himself lifted bodily into the air, suspended like an insect struggling in a spider's web—before it slams him back into the ground. Akira gasps, winded as stars burst behind his eyes, only to gag on the smell of decay once again when he realizes that the impact has dislodged his helmet.

Dazedly, he watches as it tumbles to the ground. The thin beam of the headlights sweeps erratically across the room like a strobe until it finally comes to a stop. And that's when Akira sees _it_ , slowly climbing out from the vents.

It was only illuminated for just a moment before the light flickered and died. But it was long enough for its image to be seared into Akira's memory—like something out of a nightmare, it wore a protective suit just like his, with a helmet covering its head, with arms and legs that moved just like a human's. And it could have very well have been human if not for the black, gaping maw nestled within its open chest cavity, and the thick, fleshy tentacles that spilled out from it.

Transfixed, Akira stares at the spot where he had last seen that grotesque form.

 _This can't be happening_ , a small part of his brain tries to rationalize. But the tendrils that continue to crawl, writhing unnaturally around his body says otherwise. A choked gasp escapes his lips, a far cry from the violent screaming that fills his head when he realizes that _he can't see_. 

But he can hear it. The slow, methodical thump of footsteps, the wet squelch of the tentacles as they continue to crawl up his body. He can feel them moving against his skin, looping around his bare, unprotected neck. 

He is frozen. Gripped in the same swell of dread and nausea as he remembers— _the fear frozen in Mishima's glassy eyes,_ _the strips of minced flesh peeling away from Shido's bones_. He wonders if this is what his friends will find if they can identify which pieces of him belong to him at all. If the creature will leave his face just as disfigured and unrecognizable—will his eyes be gouged, will his belly be sliced open to bleed like a pig's. 

_He wonders if Akechi will be the one to sort out his entrails._

The footsteps finally come to a stop.

It is close now, close enough for Akira to hear its slow, rhythmic breaths and feel the heat radiating off its body in sharp contrast to the coldness of the tentacles tightening around his neck. Then comes a touch, a tentative brush of fingers alongside his jaw, warm and almost human. 

Akira's breath hitches and it stays there, lodged in his throat like a ring of thorns, slowly puncturing through his esophagus. It's choking him, he realizes, with delayed dismay. Almost gently, like a boa constrictor lovingly wrapped around its prey—the slow, torturous awareness of the agony filling his lungs, the feeling of utter powerlessness as his limbs fail to obey him.

There is a crack—at first, Akira mistakes it for the sound of his neck snapping in two—until it is followed by a bright flash of light.

An ill-timed electrical discharge that illuminates the face of his assailant.

"A—" Akira gasps, his mouth moves almost subconsciously, stumbling over what should have been familiar syllables "—kechi?" 

The creature stills, tendrils suddenly loosening— _the creature with blood-red irises that shine with a cold, sinister light, the creature whose grotesque tentacles are still encircling his body. The creature who is wearing Akechi Goro's face_ — 

And then it smiles, a grin that stretches so inhumanly wide across the width of its face that it nearly splits it in two.

"Hello, Kurusu-kun," it says, with Akechi Goro's smooth voice and Akechi Goro's feigned geniality, and a mouthful of inhumanly sharp teeth. "Didn't I warn you? You should worry about _yourself_ first."

Akira feels as though he had been plunged into the ocean—his throat seizes up as his brain fills with water, muddling his thoughts until all he can hear is the sound of blood rushing into his head. He can feel his heart pulse in his chest, beating against the inside of his ribs as if it wanted to preemptively escape his chest. His waterlogged brain churns slowly, trying and failing to reconcile the image of his neat, fastidious crewmate to the eldritch abomination sneering into his face—because the creature wearing Akechi's face _is_ Akechi.

He must have taken too long to respond, or that the other had found the look of blank incomprehension on his face too offensive, because the fingers against his chin suddenly tighten painfully, forcing his head up to meet his poisonous gaze. 

"What's the matter, Kurusu?" Akechi says, the false sweetness in his voice stripped away. "Aren't you happy to see me? Normally I can't get you to shut up."

The pressure around his limbs tightens without warning, hard enough for his bones to creak. Akira cries out involuntarily, more out of surprise than pain, especially to find Akechi's face suddenly inches away from his own as he hisses,

"Or is it because do you find me _repulsive_ now?" 

Dazed, Akira continues to stare blankly—at the wicked-looking row of incisors in his mouth, at the ferocious gleam in his eyes, now a bright, inhuman scarlet in place of rust-brown—and wonders if it is actually humanly possible that he could ever be repulsed by him.

 _Akechi_ , he tries to say, bordering on hysteria as he tries to come to grips with the situation, _what is it that you want?_

But the only thing that comes out of his stupid mouth is a string of garbled noises as his brain has long since turned into putty, still reeling at the discovery that this _is_ the same Akechi that draped blankets over a sleeping Futaba, the same Akechi that smiled when Haru tucked a flower behind his ear, the same Akechi who had seemed the most human of them all. The same Akechi that he had admired for so long.

The same Akechi whose lips are pulling back into a ghastly snarl, who is looking at Akira like he finds _him_ repulsive instead. 

_"Well?"_

The noose around his neck tightens, jerking him out of his thoughts with the reminder that Akechi is still literally holding his life in his hands. The same hands that must have left Mishima and Shido on the ground like a sad pile of butcher scraps.

And Akechi could easily do the same to him.

"A-Akechi—" Akira's voice finally comes out in an embarrassing stutter, his head spinning as memories of the bloodied bodies replay behind his eyes—the white bones, the red viscera. 

_It seems_ , he thinks, the only fully formed thought left in his head, _Akechi will be the one to sort out his entrails after all_. Unbidden, heat continues to rise up into his cheeks, dispersing through the rest of his body. He feels hot, despite the cold air against his skin.

Without warning, Akechi steps back, the simmering rage behind his eyes suddenly extinguished, leaving nothing but unfeeling ash. 

"I'm disappointed in you, Kurusu-kun," he says while Akira continues to stare at him stupidly. "It appears that you are the same as the rest of those pathetic humans after all."

Dismayed, Akira finally snaps to attention, hurrying to get the right words out before the situation can escalate worse than it already has.

"Akechi, wait a sec—mrphhh!!" 

He chokes on his last syllable, or rather, he is choking on the slick tentacle that had suddenly forced its way into his mouth. Stubbornly, he attempts to call out again, only to gag when it roughly breeches his throat, plugging up his airways until his head starts to spin. His jaw burns around it, thick and spongy and secreting a strangely sweet fluid that signifies that Akechi is no longer interested in listening to Akira talk.

"I was going to be merciful and kill you first, but I changed my mind," Akechi continues to speak, in a way that would have been conversational if each word had not been dripping with malice. "I'll save you for last. I want to see if you can still tell your friends apart after I peel the skin off their bodies."

This time, Akira is sure that the pit that forms in his stomach is cold, sickening horror as he finally starts to struggle in earnest, urged on by the realization that Akechi truly means to hurt the people who should have been his friends.

 _Akechi_ , he tries to say, desperate. _Don't do this. I'm the one you hate, aren't I? Don't take it out on the others._

But the only sounds he makes are angry, muffled groans.

"You are much more tolerable this way," Akechi says, closely examining the reflexive tears burning his eyes. "I think I like you better quiet. Don't worry, as I said, I won't kill you immediately."

Akira makes another muffled noise of protest and bites down, digging the blunt of his teeth messily into the thick tentacle in his mouth. It doesn't work—not that he expected it to. The flesh merely deforms for a moment, before it roughly shoves itself deeper as if to punish him.

"But first," Akechi's eyes gleam coldly with what could only be bloodlust, "I think I'm going to—what was the human term again? Ah, yes, 'play with my food' for a bit."

The tendrils suddenly move again, yanking painfully at his wrists and ankles until he is fully suspended in the air, spread apart like a frog readied for dissection. They continue to coil around him, all the while secreting a thick, milky substance that hisses upon making contact with the surface of his suit. Akira's eyes widen with alarm as the ooze begins to eat away at the fabric, eroding it layer by layer along the pathway of where the tendrils had bound his body.

He stills, eyes squeezing shut as he braces himself for the burning acid to melt away his flesh the same way it had melted his protective gear away from his body. But to his surprise, the ooze does not burn him as he feared—the secretions are wet and slightly cool against his bare skin as the tendrils writhe against him, trailing mucous on his chest, around his thighs, his cheeks— 

"Mmpfh??" says Akira, stiffening in shock when he feels something press against the swell of his ass. It is also then that he realizes that his suit is all but gone, the thick layers of insulation eaten away, leaving his torso completely exposed. A wave of embarrassment washes over him, magnified by the way Akechi's cold gaze lingers on the lines of his chest before sweeping down to his navel and— _what exactly had Akechi meant by 'playing with his food'?_

Akira stiffens as another rush of what he assumes must be dread starts to pool in his stomach—only it is not accompanied by the usual chill in his bones or the ice in his veins. Instead, he feels like his blood is burning like the way the secretions had burned through his suit, a strange, heady rush of heat that quickens his breath and dilates his pupils.

But before he can examine the feeling closer, he finds himself yelping around the tentacle plugging his throat at the shock of another cool bulbous head prodding at his cheeks. "Mmffphh??" he says again, squirming in discomfort as the appendages grow bolder, kneading at his flesh and smearing trails of slick. 

His weak attempts at resistance only seem to encourage the fleshy appendages to crawl all over his body, circling his thighs, brushing past his nipples. Unlike before, their movements are less violent and more curious, pressing against him in an almost exploratory way, like how a cat might smack a mouse around, watching with predatory curiosity as its struggles slowly ceased. The next sound that comes out from Akira's gagged throat is nothing short of a _moan_ —his face is flushed, his limbs are weak, and every point of contact between his body and the tendrils are on fire.

Another embarrassing noise escapes his throat, distorted by the tentacle's slow, lazy thrusts. The others are starting to grow bolder, pinching and rubbing at his skin with surprising dexterity, drenching his skin with more and more slick that drips to the ground in irregular wet plops. There's another tendril, thicker and hotter than the others, that boldly presses against his sensitive opening. 

Akira buckles uselessly against his restraints, a broken-off whine ringing in his ears that he barely recognizes as his own. The thick head continues to rub harder against his opening, moving with obvious intent that sends a thrill of terror up his spine. His body shudders, reeling from the overload of sensations as it is ceaselessly assaulted, played with like a ragdoll helpless to resist its owner's whims.

Throughout all of it, Akechi's face stays unreadable like it was carved out of jade, watching the proceedings with frigid eyes and looking like it's someone else's tentacles that are molesting his body. Cold, merciless, like he is merely tenderizing a slab of meat on the cutting board. Like this, Akechi can do anything with him— _violate him, torture him, dig out his eyes, tear his flesh slowly from the bones, consume him until nothing is left—_

"What's this?"

Akira makes the mistake of meeting Akechi's eyes—now so cold and alien—and shudders at the unreadable intensity that he finds there. His heart stutters in his chest when Akechi leans in, nailing him in place with his hungry, crimson stare. Without warning, something roughly squeezes around his cock, dragging an aggrieved cry from his throat as his body jerks in its bonds. He glares, eyes still misted with tears, trying to convey his extreme displeasure. That only makes Akechi break into a smile. 

"Look at you, Kurusu," he says slowly, as if savoring his words. The hand around his cock actually tightens as if to make a cruel, humiliating point. "It's like you're actually _enjoying_ this. How disgusting."

Akira's freezes. Eyes widening when he finally realizes that he is _hard_.

Oh. 

_Oh_. 

It was like a switch had flipped in Akira's head—the thick blanket of fog over his brain wasn't lifted so much as it was ripped away by Akechi's antagonistic words. The small spike of realization suddenly becomes a surging tidal wave of embarrassment when Akira finally figures out the truth.

He _is_ enjoying this.

Akira looks up into Akechi's smug, gloating face—a face so familiar and unfamiliar. His elegant, neat charisma is gone, replaced with a feral, monstrous magnetism that fills him with endless fascination. Hungrily, he drinks in the middle of his open chest cavity, the beguiling curve of his white bones, the contrast of the black talons on his hands against his thighs. Suddenly it clicks that these are _Akechi's_ tentacles, _Akechi_ holding him up roughly by his wrists, _Akechi_ caressing him all over his skin, pressing carelessly inside him, _Akechi_ promising to take him apart in ways he could have only dreamed of. 

The tightness in his chest, the almost nauseous giddiness had never been fear, but _excitement._

In the darkened engine room, Akira's face _flames_ with color, a trickle of drool escaping his mouth to mix with the rest of the tentacle's secretions. His struggles slow, until they come to a stop entirely, leaving him hanging docile in Akechi's grasp.

 _How embarrassing_ , he thinks, hurriedly averting his eyes as he feels his dick twitch with interest, almost painful with need against the heat from Akechi's palms. He wishes his hands weren't bound so he can cover his face because this is the absolute worst time to discover that he has a huge raging crush on Akechi and is also apparently a huge, raging monsterfucker with a death kink. 

Before he can begin to recover from his earth-shattering epiphany, he suddenly finds himself choking again.

" _Look at me!"_ Akechi snarls, digging his nails into his throat, hard enough to break the skin, leaving hot trickles of red blood. The ice in his eyes has shattered, giving away to a scorching madness that threatens to immolate him from the inside out. "Look at me or I'll tear out those defiant eyes of yours. I want you to watch as I _ruin_ you. Until you're nothing but a receptacle for my seed. After I grow bored of you, I'll dismember you, watch you asphyxiate on your own blood. And you'd enjoy that too, wouldn't you? You disgusting piece of engine room _trash_." 

_Yes_ , Akira nearly screams—he _does_ scream, tears leaking embarrassingly from his eyes when he feels Akechi's claws digging bloody grooves into his hips, when the thick, bulbous tentacle finally slams into his body with almost enough force to tear him in half. It pounds mercilessly into him, burrowing far deeper than any human ever could, so thick and full that it completely knocks the breath from his lungs and the rest of his brain cells from his head. 

_Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes._

Akira is drowning in sensation, gagging on the sweet fluid gushing down his throat. The painful rake of nails down his back, splitting his skin wide open, the sweet burn of agony mixing deliciously with the painful pleasure building up in his core. He is drowning in _Akechi—_ Akechi is fucking his throat, squeezing around his dick, filling his body with dozens more of squirming tentacles of varying thickness, all pounding away in irregular rhythms that pushes him off the brink of sanity—he comes, screams muffled by the new tentacles greedily forcing their way into his mouth.

He feels so full, so stuffed—Akechi is everywhere, inside and around him, growling into his shoulder, sinking his sharp teeth into his skin, marking every last inch of his body. He feels so fragile, so breakable as Akechi brutalizes him just the way he wants it.

All the while, he looks at him, pupils blown wide and eyes half-lidded with dizzying pleasure—he stares at Akechi as if trying to burn the sight of him into his retinas before he makes good on his promise to remove them from his head. Akechi with his bloodied eyes, the hungry, possessive way he takes what he wants from Akira’s body. The way his cheeks are flushed, the cruel beauty in the lines of his jaw and the rough snap of his hips. 

"Kurusu," he gasps into his neck. Gone is his polite, refined demeanor, his neatly combed hair, his genial smiles. In its place is the Akechi that he had always longed to see, in his rawest form. "Kurusu, you feel so, so good. You're so fucking _perfect._ Your face is so stupidly pretty, even if you're so infuriating and moronic—you have _no_ idea how long I've wanted to do this to you."

 _Huh_ , thinks Akira, dazed. _What did he just—_

The tentacle in his mouth suddenly convulses, rudely spraying copious amounts of fluid straight into his guts. It makes him choke, coughing and sputtering as the spent appendage slips from his mouth with a lewd, wet pop. The excess fluid dribbles from his bruised lips and leaks from his chin, and before he can even think of catching his breath, let alone try and _communicate_ with Akechi, Akechi crushes his lips together in a bruising, searing kiss. 

Once again, Akira’s head empties, all coherence banished by the bashful giddiness that Akechi is _kissing him_. He feels like he has been drugged, except his choice of intoxication is the heady feeling of Akechi's unusually long tongue mapping out his palate. The rest of the tentacles drag him down, holding him so close against Akechi's chest that he can feel his open ribs dig into his flesh. Unlike the cool slick of his tentacles, Akechi's humanoid body is warm, burning against Akira’s fevered skin. He wants to stay here forever, inextricably entwined within Akechi's perfect being, until he can no longer remember any name but _his_. 

An eternity passes by like this—with Akechi flush against him, decorating his skin with marks, leaving him stuffed so full of tentacles, taking turns to fill his increasingly distended stomach with alien cum—until they are all finally spent. 

After emptying the last of their seed into his thoroughly used holes, the tentacles exit him just as roughly as they had entered with a lewd squelch. His legs twitch weakly as he feels the fluids gush out, warmed by his body heat against his thighs. 

Akira collapses in the restraints, breathless and boneless, his cheek resting on Akechi's still clothed shoulder. Like this, it is almost as if his tentacles are encircling him in a loose embrace. There is a hand on his cheek, almost tender as it thumbs away some of the residual mess of tears and secretions. He has long since lost track of how many times he has come as well, his own cock twitching feebly against his leg, too spent to even get hard again. His entire body is one giant ache, from the bruises circling his limbs to the soreness in his gaping ass. Not to mention the absolutely shredded skin on his back and thighs. 

He feels thoroughly fucked in every sense in the word. Ruined, just as Akechi had promised.

And yet.

Yet he still wants _more_.

"Akechi..." Akira mumbles the moment he catches a semblance of breath, weakly rocking his hips as if trying to convince the tentacles to return for at least a couple more rounds. He nearly winces as he does since his voice sounds absolutely wretched from all the screaming. "P-Please—" 

The hand combing through his curls suddenly stills—instead, it fists his hair, roughly dragging Akira backward with a spike of pain in his scalp.

Akechi is glowering at him, a wild, livid look in his eyes that makes him look more deranged than ever. "Shut up," he hisses, leaving Akira to wonder just what he has done to piss him off this time. "Do you really think I will show you mercy just because you _begged_ nicely?"

"H-huh," says Akira, confused since he had been about to beg for the exact opposite. 

"I don't need you, Kurusu," Akechi snarls. "You're just a pathetic, sniveling little human. I don't _need_ you and I'll _prove it_."

For the second time, Akechi's humanoid hands close around his neck—but this time, like he means it. Akira whimpers involuntarily as white-hot stars explode behind his eyes. He can feel the fragile bones in his throat constricting—soon, Akechi's hands will crush his airpipe, cutting off his precious oxygen. Then, he will die, suffocating, smothered in the embrace of the person he cares about the most—a beautiful, murderous eldritch abomination. 

And Akira is _thrilled_.

"Akechi…" he gasps with his last breaths, reaching futilely up to tangle his fingers around the grip around his neck, not to pry it off but to hold it as tenderly as he had daydreamed about holding Akechi's hands. His lips stretch apart into an involuntary grin—as smug as a cat that got the canary and probably several times more deranged than the look in Akechi's eyes. "Hngh… yes… just like that..."

 _This isn't a bad way to go_ , he thinks, content and sated and thoroughly satisfied. His synapses are going haywire, the rational part of his brain firing in alarm but in a vague, distant way that is actually pretty nice— 

And suddenly, the tentacles release him. Akira crumples to the ground wheezing from the sudden shock of cold air re-entering his lungs and with it the unwelcome clarity that his entire body _aches_ —from the soreness in his muscles and _obscenely_ stretched hole and the throbbing pain in his head. He groans into the floor, wrinkling his nose slightly as it hits him how much the room _reeks_ , but before he can properly recover he is almost immediately shoved onto his back again.

"... Kurusu, what the _fuck_ ?" Akechi asks, low and absolutely furious, gripping his shoulders with human hands instead. "What the _fuck_ was that? Why are you smiling? Why aren't you _resisting_?" 

Akira is too busy coughing to answer him, his shriveled lungs greedily sucking in oxygen. But when he finally regains enough brain cells to formulate sentences again, he realizes that he has no idea what to say. "Um," he says, somewhat stupidly. 

"Well?" Akechi demands, low and dangerous like he is on the verge of snapping Akira's spine like a toothpick if his answer isn't to his satisfaction. It's too bad that his brain is _bad_ and _stupid_ and the reminder that Akechi can and had always been capable of tearing him to shreds is only making his dick twitch again. 

"Um," he tries again, without much success. "It's just. This is kind of hot, you know?" 

"... _excuse me?!_ " Akechi's voice is an entire octave higher than usual. He actually springs several paces away from him like _Akira_ is the eldritch abomination that had just fucked him in every hole. Or perhaps, to Akechi, Akira _is_ the weird one? "What the fuck is wrong with you?!"

Akira takes a moment to consider the question with the seriousness that it deserved. "...I really don't know," he answers eventually. "Look, brains are just like that sometimes—or maybe _you're_ the one who did something weird to me with your lewd alien biology." 

"My—appendages most certainly do _not_ have _aphrodisiac effects_ !" he hisses, so incredibly scandalized that it almost makes Akira dizzy with the effort to hold back his laughter. But that might also be the concussion speaking. "How dare you try to cast the blame on me for your—your own— _whorishness_!" 

His face had mostly reformed back into the Akechi that Akira is familiar with—garnet eyes flashing with indignation, cheeks reddened in outrage like when Akira had taken his soup and ran across the ship to toss it out of the airlock—the same fussy, brilliant crewmate that had long since captured his heart.

"It's because I like you," he blurts out, entirely inappropriately but he is too high on his sudden realization to care. "And if you want to cut me open and eat my liver, I'd be okay with that too. I think—as long as you don't kill and eat the rest of our friends." The look that Akechi shoots him in return is one of abject horror, like he had confessed to something far more terrible than having a penchant for tentacles and strangulation.

Akechi continues to sputter, forming and discarding syllables that he had probably intended to be sentences. "What— _why_ —?!"

Akira thinks for a second. "Because I'll get jealous," he says in all seriousness (putting aside the fact that he'd probably be too dead to have an opinion about it).

"No, you _idiot_ ," Akechi practically screeches, shaking Akira so roughly by the shoulders that his brain rattles in his skull. He looks incredibly flustered, more so than Akira has ever seen from him before. It is as uncharacteristic as it is endearing and Akira's heart grows even fonder. "Why are you like this? Why do you like _me_ ? Don't you see what I am? Just look at what I've _done_ to you!"

Akira struggles to answer him, not because he doesn't know the answer to his question, but because he has too many answers. If he had to stop and list out all of the reasons why he likes Akechi, the life support systems would probably have failed by then and they would probably all suffocate in the vacuum of space.

Of course, Akira likes the sound of his voice, the way his hair falls into his eyes, the smug curl of his lips. But he also likes his aversion to spicy foods and the way his face reddens and his eyes tear up whenever it's Akira's turn in the kitchen, the poorly hidden smugness in his voice when he thinks he knows better, the way the stars are reflected in his contemplative gaze—and all of the other things that make Akechi so terribly, terribly _human_. 

"Maybe I just think you're hot," is what comes out of his stupid mouth instead. 

"I am a mimic that feeds on human flesh," Akechi reminds him helpfully, looking three seconds away from stabbing through his face with a spike from his mouth. "What your people would deem 'a monster with a borrowed face.' You must truly be the _shallowest_ of your species to overlook my true nature just because my meat suit has an appealing _bone structure_." 

As if to prove his point, he unhinges his jaw, opening it up inhumanly wide to show off his sharp, wicked-looking incisors, sending another delicious thrill down Akira's spine. 

"But I like you," Akira replies earnestly. "You're sarcastic and mean, and you think you're so much better than everyone else. You're a sore loser and you'll go out of your way to get revenge for the pettiest things. Like the time you stayed up for two days because Ryuji beat your arcade score or the time you secretly rearranged all of Makoto's books because she corrected you on a star chart. You're always there to laugh at me condescendingly when I screw something up. The food you try to make turns into toxic waste—oh, the alien thing really makes sense now, huh."

"...............I am truly struggling to see the point you are making."

"Oh, right. Um. The point. The point is that I like _you._ When I talk to you, I feel like you actually see me for me. You make me happy and… and if killing me horrifically will make you happy, that's okay too. But… um, before you do that, can you fuck me a few more times?"

For a moment, Akechi looks absolutely flummoxed.

"Akechi?" Akira asks, mildly concerned that he might have come on too strong at the end. He blushes a little, fidgeting in the pool of cum and slime that is still trickling out of him. Maybe this isn't the best time and place for a confession?

"Kurusu, there is something terribly, terribly wrong with you," Akechi spits out, jerking away when Akira tries to pat his shoulder comfortingly. "I—I _killed_ your friend. I am going to kill you. Wipe out every last disgusting human being on this fucking ship." 

Akira frowns, the post-coital high finally fading enough for him to think—because he normally isn't as stupid as Akechi thinks he is. Something is off, a faint discordant note in Akechi's hateful words—the look in his eyes, the way his body hunches over seems to be at odds with each other. 

"...Akechi," he says, hesitantly. "… what do you really want?" 

Akechi freezes. He refuses to meet his eyes, staring at the blood leaking out from the tarp at the side. The tarp beneath where Shido lay—Shido with his bizarrely shaped organs, the strange resemblance to— 

"Does it matter?" Akechi says in finality, but that in itself is the answer that Akira needs.

"Then don't," Akira pleads, his head spinning as he works to put everything together. "Just stay with us. Just like before."

Akechi suddenly laughs, wild and unhinged, just like he had movements before he had wrung Akira's neck like a towel. "Always the joker, aren't you," he hisses. "Do you think the others would accept a _monster_ living among them? Something that can tear them apart on a whim? Do you seriously think I would _want_ to go back to hiding myself like a rat? Do you seriously think everything will just _work out_ and we'll all hold hands and live happily ever after?

"Even that spineless little worm showed his true colors at the end," Akechi sneers, spitting his words out like venom. "Oh, how he had screamed when he looked upon my true face, blustering with bravado in his last moments. It really is unfortunate for you that his shot failed to connect."

And finally, the pieces click in place in Akira's brain, painting a picture so vivid that he can practically smell the antiseptic, drowning out the thick scent of blood within those sterile white walls, and the neon green of the med bay scans reflecting off the horror in Mishima's eyes. Akechi's obstinate reluctance to seek treatment against all advice, his insistence on taking all meals alone, his sudden aversion to Akira's overtures of friendship—it makes his eyes sting and his throat twist with a thousand daggers when everything finally makes sense.

He wants to cry—his heart is bleeding with regret and empathy for the monster that had tried so hard to be human. He wants to take Akechi into his arms, to press his mouth against his gaping maw, to somehow find the right words to convince him of his sincerity. 

"No one liked Mishima anyway," is the horrible thing that slips out instead. Or Shido, but that doesn't even need to be said if his guess is right. He flushes at the hypocritically scandalized look that Akechi shoots him, especially considering exactly who between the two of them was actually responsible for decorating the ship with Mishima's guts. But if he is going to utterly flub this last-ditch attempt to save them both from a life of regrets (however short it may be in his case), he might as well go out with style. "I mean, what happened with Mishima… sucks."

"It 'sucks'?" Akechi parrots back to him, too incredulous for it to be scathing. "I would have thought you of all people wouldn't be so fucking callous—" 

Akira hurriedly interrupts him while mildly wishing that Akechi had driven a spike through his head when he had the chance. "You didn't _want_ to kill him. You don't actually want to kill anyone."

For a long time, Akechi says nothing.

"Does it _matter_?" he finally hisses. "Will it change the fact that Mishima Yuuki's body is decaying in the airlock because the lot of you are too pathetically sentimental to eject it?"

"Yes," Akira insists, especially considering the fact that _he_ didn't even know his first name was Yuuki. 

"And what if it had been one of your blond friends?" he retorts, a sinister light suddenly creeping into his eyes—blood red and inhumanly bright. And the tendrils that had been docile for so long suddenly move again, constricting around his throat and cutting off his air until his vision swims. Akechi definitely has a choking kink. "What if it had been the artist? Little miss know-it-all?"

Akira grits his teeth but refuses to allow his resolve to be shaken, forcing down his instincts to struggle lest Akechi takes it for rejection. "You're deflecting," he wheezes out instead. "Did you want to kill him?"

Akechi freezes, looking like Akira had suddenly shot him between the eyes.

"No," he admits quietly, defeated as the tendrils binding him loosens. "I did not."

"And," Akira hazards through the raspiness in his throat, "you don't want to kill our friends."

"Do you realize that you've left yourself out of the equation?" Akechi asks drily, automatically reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose, leading Akira to realize with a burst of sudden affection that even aliens had some unshakable habits.

"Well," he babbles nervously, "I mean, I already told you I think it's kind of hot when you threaten me."

"Kurusu…" Akechi says with the same horrified exasperation he always had whenever Akira flaunted his utter lack of self-preservation instincts. 

"Like, it would, uh, kind of suck to be dead but I always wondered what it would be like, and honestly, it would be a great way to go all things considered—"

"Kurusu-kun, please shut the fuck up," Akechi says sweetly as he gags Akira’s stupid mouth with another tentacle. Which Akira finds even hotter but that is definitely not the point.

 _Please, trust me_ , Akira wills him to hear instead, bringing his forehead against Akechi's still human one. _Give us another chance._

The tendrils coil around him again, almost hesitant as they wind around his torso and carefully draws him into a careful embrace.

"...fuck," Akechi murmurs. "Fuck. You win this time, Kurusu."

  
  
  


* * *

**Extra**

  
  


Much later, after a lot of chaos and screaming, and an unfortunate dispute involving hails of gunfire and several near reactor meltdowns, Akira and Akechi finally manage to gather the rest of crewmates in the cafeteria for an emergency meeting to explain the situation. (Even Akechi still looks like he's one good reason away from massacring everyone on the ship which is why Akira keeps a firm grip on his hand.)

"Well," Ryuji grumbles as he presses winds the tourniquet tighter around his arm as Haru apologetically tries to pick out the bullet, "no one liked Mishima anyway."

**Author's Note:**

> : )


End file.
